I’m well aware that Star Wars is fictional and things exist or don’t because of what the plot demands; but I like to look at Star Wars from an in-universe point of view and scientifically. I know when Lucas wrote Star Wars in the late 70’s/early 80’s, he didn’t have the foresight (nobody did) to see what wonder technologies, like the internet, would be invented BUT let’s PRETEND Star Wars is real and we are people living in that society. Can anybody provide explanations as to why these things don’t exist in Star Wars?

1.) In Star Wars Resistance Season 2 which takes place in 34 BBY, Neeku says the Colossus station is running low on food, water and fuel. While this makes sense since they are in space and on the run and plot synopsis for episode “Hunt on Celsor 3” and “A Quick Salvage Run” has them try to find food and hyperfuel to make hyperspace jumps. Now I understand that they just might not have these resources onboard BUT the Colossus is like a giant city. Why doesn’t the Colossus have food synthesizers, water synthesizers or means to make synthetic coaxium?

All ships have food synthesizers (we see that in Legends) and water IS able to be created from scratch. You just need to combine hydrogen and oxygen with a massive burst of explosive energy. Currently unsafe to do on Earth; I would imagine SW scientists would figure out out a way to replicate the process microscopically; without an explosion and make water.

Coaxium is extremely volatile and probably would be tricky to engineer but they’ve been using it for 25,000 years; so I can’t believe someone hasn’t found a way to create it artificially. What’s the deal?

2.) Why hasn’t Star Wars discovered wireless power transmission like Tesla envisioned? They still plug everything in. Could wireless power have some drawbacks that make cords and wires a better option?

3.) The gay cat lover aliens from the 2015 Lando miniseries talk about affording the money to make a clone to serve as their surrogate child. In a world, where same-sex relationships are commonplace, I don’t understand why they don’t have artificial gametes so they can produce children with their bodies

4.) In a New Dawn, the mining facilities on Gorse are at the mercy of earthquakes generated by the tidal forces of its tidal locked moon Cynda. Many of the buildings are damaged by the quakes. Why don’t they have some sort of Geo-seismic stabilizers to help the structures be earthquake proof? We have some methods of earthquake protection on Earth; why don’t they? I can’t imagine they haven’t appeared in Legends

5.) Archex in Black Spire has had his lung damaged in a fight with Phasma. Why not replace it with an artificial lung like Demetrius Vidian had?

6.) Finally in the Phasma novel, Phasmas homeworld of Parnossos had been ravaged by nuclear war and the land is poisoned by radiation. I get nobody cares about a backwater rock like Parnossos, but surely they have some sort of “ De-nuclearization ” methods to clean the waste? Nuclear weapons and power are primitive in Star Wars so they should be able to clean it quite easily.

Again. I know Star Wars runs on plot but from an in-universe perspective; what could be the problems for why these things aren’t done?

You must unlearn what you have learned.

The main reason these things don't exist in Star Wars is because they didn't exist in the 70s-80s when eps 4.6 were made. I my campaigns I encourage players to think of the universe with a 1970's sci-fi mind. Its easy for us as most of my group were born in the 70s!

I am sure someone like @Tramp Graphics will explain the reasons why in a canonical or EU sense ( 😝 ) but I like my reasoning because its how I grew up viewing Star Wars.

6 hours ago, Leia Hourglass said:

I’m well aware that Star Wars is fictional and things exist or don’t because of what the plot demands; but I like to look at Star Wars from an in-universe point of view and scientifically. I know when Lucas wrote Star Wars in the late 70’s/early 80’s, he didn’t have the foresight (nobody did) to see what wonder technologies, like the internet, would be invented BUT let’s PRETEND Star Wars is real and we are people living in that society. Can anybody provide explanations as to why these things don’t exist in Star Wars?

1.) In Star Wars Resistance Season 2 which takes place in 34 BBY, Neeku says the Colossus station is running low on food, water and fuel. While this makes sense since they are in space and on the run and plot synopsis for episode “Hunt on Celsor 3” and “A Quick Salvage Run” has them try to find food and hyperfuel to make hyperspace jumps. Now I understand that they just might not have these resources onboard BUT the Colossus is like a giant city. Why doesn’t the Colossus have food synthesizers, water synthesizers or means to make synthetic coaxium?

All ships have food synthesizers (we see that in Legends) and water IS able to be created from scratch. You just need to combine hydrogen and oxygen with a massive burst of explosive energy. Currently unsafe to do on Earth; I would imagine SW scientists would figure out out a way to replicate the process microscopically; without an explosion and make water.

Coaxium is extremely volatile and probably would be tricky to engineer but they’ve been using it for 25,000 years; so I can’t believe someone hasn’t found a way to create it artificially. What’s the deal?

2.) Why hasn’t Star Wars discovered wireless power transmission like Tesla envisioned? They still plug everything in. Could wireless power have some drawbacks that make cords and wires a better option?

3.) The gay cat lover aliens from the 2015 Lando miniseries talk about affording the money to make a clone to serve as their surrogate child. In a world, where same-sex relationships are commonplace, I don’t understand why they don’t have artificial gametes so they can produce children with their bodies

4.) In a New Dawn, the mining facilities on Gorse are at the mercy of earthquakes generated by the tidal forces of its tidal locked moon Cynda. Many of the buildings are damaged by the quakes. Why don’t they have some sort of Geo-seismic stabilizers to help the structures be earthquake proof? We have some methods of earthquake protection on Earth; why don’t they? I can’t imagine they haven’t appeared in Legends

5.) Archex in Black Spire has had his lung damaged in a fight with Phasma. Why not replace it with an artificial lung like Demetrius Vidian had?

6.) Finally in the Phasma novel, Phasmas homeworld of Parnossos had been ravaged by nuclear war and the land is poisoned by radiation. I get nobody cares about a backwater rock like Parnossos, but surely they have some sort of “ De-nuclearization ” methods to clean the waste? Nuclear weapons and power are primitive in Star Wars so they should be able to clean it quite easily.

Again. I know Star Wars runs on plot but from an in-universe perspective; what could be the problems for why these things aren’t done?

Because, at its core, Star Wars isn't science fiction. It's a samurai fantasy western WWII movie mashup with a Flash Gordon skin. It's not interested in doing the things the science fiction genre does, and when it occasionally does in the side material, it usually doesn't feel like proper Star Wars anymore (hello, Yuuzong Vong).

You get the bare minimum that is required to have ntergalactic empires, like spaceships and hyperdrives, but the rest of it is reskinned katanas, reskinned WWII fighter planes and dogfights, reskinned wild west frontier settlements... It has reskinned versions of the tech we had available in the 70's, like walkie talkies (comlinks) but not Iphones. The holonet is functionally a tv channel, not the internet, and it is used to transmit holovideo but not text or other data.

It's one of the things I like most aboput Star Wars, and usually the first thing to go in Star Wars RPGs.

6 hours ago, Leia Hourglass said:

All ships have food synthesizers (we see that in Legends) and water IS able to be created from scratch. You just need to combine hydrogen and oxygen with a massive burst of explosive energy. Currently unsafe to do on Earth; I would imagine SW scientists would figure out out a way to replicate the process microscopically; without an explosion and make water.

Actually, for water you only need a small spark. Hydrogen + Oxygen is an exothermic (produces energy) reaction. But you do need the supplies of gaseous hydrogen and oxygen to start with.

I can't imagine Colossus bothered having a huge stockpile of water tanked away because a few days before (and for many years) it was floating in a massive ocean, in a planet with a breathable atmosphere. Just pump a litre out of the sea, run it through a cheap, energy-efficient desalination processor and voila; drinking water. It wouldn't surprise me if it had (as per the design) the capacity to store huge quantities of consumables (look at the cut-away of a star destroyer and see how much of it is storage space!) but there was no particular reason to keep them full before Kaz' "brilliant plan" was put into action.

Ditto food synthesizer. That lets you create food. It does require some input - raw materials (chemical sugars and carbohydrates and so on) - they weren't star trek 'replicators', and even if they were, if Colossus is desperately short of reactor fuel it doesn't have the power to spare running the things. Again, maybe it has them, maybe it doesn't, but massive life-rich ocean and trading relationships were what it was used to relying on for....basically everything.

6 hours ago, Leia Hourglass said:

6.) Finally in the Phasma novel, Phasmas homeworld of Parnossos had been ravaged by nuclear war and the land is poisoned by radiation. I get nobody cares about a backwater rock like Parnossos, but surely they have some sort of “ De-nuclearization ” methods to clean the waste? Nuclear weapons and power are primitive in Star Wars so they should be able to clean it quite easily.

The Empire or Republic? Yes. It's not a trivial job, but they could have done it, if they ever turned up/knew it was there/cared. But a bunch of feral tribespeople? No. Terraforming on a planetary scale is a pretty huge job for anything less than a multi-system entity.

6 hours ago, Leia Hourglass said:

2.) Why hasn’t Star Wars discovered wireless power transmission like Tesla envisioned? They still plug everything in. Could wireless power have some drawbacks that make cords and wires a better option?

Three reasons:

1. Control. Wireless power is available to anyone with the ability to draw from the charged atmosphere/ground/whatever medium you're using. That's an issue if you're a corporation or government and want to charge people for the power you're providing.
2. Security. The 'sockets' appear to contain data-flow as well - hence astromech-compatible sockets everywhere. Yes, encryption is a thing, but not broadcasting stuff is always safer than broadcasting it, both in terms of data (which the 'bad guys' might crack) and in power supply for military bases (which makes them easier for the bad guys to 'spot')
3. Safety. Whilst low-power near-field stuff (like 'swipe cards', touch-charging phones and so on) are fine (and for all we know there is near-field through-hull charging going on with starships in docking cradles, like the TIE/sf's huge racks of batteries), large-scale, long-distance charging puts a huge amount of radiated energy in the same volume of space as people (and, in the case of a military base, explosives). This is almost always a bad thing.

7 hours ago, Leia Hourglass said:

3.) The gay cat lover aliens from the 2015 Lando miniseries talk about affording the money to make a clone to serve as their surrogate child. In a world, where same-sex relationships are commonplace, I don’t understand why they don’t have artificial gametes so they can produce children with their bodies

Cloning is definitely a thing. Beyond that...you're in to the psychology and ethics of fictional alien races as to how they would use the technology.

7 hours ago, Leia Hourglass said:

4.) In a New Dawn, the mining facilities on Gorse are at the mercy of earthquakes generated by the tidal forces of its tidal locked moon Cynda. Many of the buildings are damaged by the quakes. Why don’t they have some sort of Geo-seismic stabilizers to help the structures be earthquake proof? We have some methods of earthquake protection on Earth; why don’t they? I can’t imagine they haven’t appeared in Legends

Probably the simple argument of "can't afford them" or "the mining guild won't pay for them." Just because something exists doesn't mean everyone gets access to it.

7 hours ago, Leia Hourglass said:

5.) Archex in Black Spire has had his lung damaged in a fight with Phasma. Why not replace it with an artificial lung like Demetrius Vidian had?

Not knowing the character, I don't know if it's a case of 'can't' (money/criminal status) or 'won't' (there has been in legends several mentions of the fact that cyborgs get looked down on, a lot).

Food synthesizers exist, but they require resources. Star Wars doesn't have Star Trek matter replicators that can break down and reformat any matter into any other matter. In Star Wars you basically have food printers. Load sugars, starches, carbohydrates into storage tanks and the synthesizers can squeeze that stuff into a food based form. You still need the basic ingredients loaded into the machine for it to work. When you consider the amount of power used to reformat the basic ingredients into food and the time required to do so, you realize this isn't the best way to feed people for the most part. On smaller ships, it just made more sense to carry food rations. On larger ships, it make more sense to stock actual food products and prepare them in a kitchen. Food synthesizers were basically used for VIPs and luxury ships to cater to individual desires.

Wireless power transmission is inefficient, and full of problems and pitfalls. It simply isn't feasible to use it on a large scale. Wiring electricity is simple, safe, dependable, reliable, and cheaper than trying to incorporate wireless charging into everything.

Cat alien baby problem...why even ask what could be explained in dozens of possible ways. Maybe cloning is easier, cheaper, more efficient. Maybe the star wars tech line went down the cloning aspect and decided that artificial gametes weren't a feasible idea. Maybe the cat aliens don't want to produce children with their bodies for health reasons, or superficial reasons. Maybe they have some religious bent against your gamete idea. Who knows...or cares.

Earthquake proof buildings. Sure, I'm guessing these exist. But a mining guild isn't exactly overseen by Osha. Cheap labor, no real loss by people dying, maybe it's not affordable, maybe it would eat into profits too much. Maybe they just don't give a ****.

Star wars has artificial limbs and organs. Grown organic or mechanical. Expense, chance of survival, available tech, etc are all factors. Artificial limbs/organs are often seen as less than desirable also. On top of that, artificial stuff is seen as a weakness. Archex could very well choose to live with the condition in order to overcome it, or as a personal reminder not to underestimate people, or whatever personal reason.

Star wars is littered with polluted worlds. Toxic chemicals, nuclear waste, trash, scrap, debris. While the ability to treat those issues may exist, the expense just isn't worth it. Spending a fortune cleaning up backwater worlds that never had or will ever have any value is a hard sell. It's cheaper to just relocate people if you care about them in the first place.

People always trying to get their sci-fi all up in my fantasy...

18 hours ago, micheldebruyn said:

Because, at its core, Star Wars isn't science fiction. It's a samurai fantasy western WWII movie mashup with a Flash Gordon skin. It's not interested in doing the things the science fiction genre does, and when it occasionally does in the side material, it usually doesn't feel like proper Star Wars anymore (hello, Yuuzong Vong).

You get the bare minimum that is required to have ntergalactic empires, like spaceships and hyperdrives, but the rest of it is reskinned katanas, reskinned WWII fighter planes and dogfights, reskinned wild west frontier settlements... It has reskinned versions of the tech we had available in the 70's, like walkie talkies (comlinks) but not Iphones. The holonet is functionally a tv channel, not the internet, and it is used to transmit holovideo but not text or other data.

It's one of the things I like most aboput Star Wars, and usually the first thing to go in Star Wars RPGs.

I see where you’re coming from. Someone suggested I RPG Star Trek but I’m more drawn to Star Wars. It had a huge influence on me as a child due to the action; something Star Trek lacked. I still liked watching it though.

From 2008-2010, I was obsessed with the possible applications of the Force so I was very much in sync with the primarily fantasy aspect. However in 2011, I became fascinated with futuristic science and for the last 3 years; I’ve become obsessed with integrating science into Star Wars. I know it’s a poor fit but it’s hard to stop my obsession. I’m currently on the highest level of psychiatric medicine for OCD which I was diagnosed with in 2012. So this is almost 9 years of manic behavior.

Star Wars has advanced AI that can feel pain and fear but doesn't have wi-fi. Star Wars has faster than light travel but doesn't have women's underwear. Star Wars has civilizations of advanced people that live for 300+ years yet the entire galaxy has forgotten about something that happened 20 years ago. Star Wars has a mystical energy field that binds all living and inanimate things but doesn't have inertia in space.

Very few things in Star Wars were intended to make scientific sense. Instead they were intended to be cool, mysterious or at least analogous for the audience.

6 hours ago, DarkHorse said:

Very few things in Star Wars were intended to make scientific sense. Instead they were intended to be cool, mysterious or at least analogous for the audience.

Star Wars was written first and foremost as a fairy tale set in space, and such follows the same general pattern of fairy tales, in that things don't necessarily have to make sense or have rational/logical explanations. But since Star Wars is set in space, there are folks that presume that the setting must by default be far more advanced than our own. Granted, that might be true for settings that lean much harder on the science part of science fiction (classic example being Star Trek), but Star Wars at its best has never leaned heard on the science and instead is comfortable being a space opera full of adventure and heroics, with anything science-based or futuristic just being there to provide backdrop.

On 10/7/2019 at 8:39 PM, Leia Hourglass said:

Why doesn’t the Colossus have food synthesizers, water synthesizers or means to make synthetic coaxium?

It's just not really a thing in Star Wars.

Consider the Colossus has been a planet-based station for years. Even if the station had those things, there would have been no reason t keep them running, or the stores fully stocked. Why recycle water when you can desalinate the seawater? Why store tons of food and raw materials needed for the auto-chefs when you've got transport ships coming and going all day every day? If you could easily and efficiently make Synthetic Coaxium, don't you think they would?

Remember, every Sci-fi setting is different, and situations change within them as well. Something like Star Trek can replicate food because narratively it was important to the story and the Federation as a post-scarcity culture. Mechanically it was a logical next-step to Transporter Tech.

Star Wars is a more technologically grounded, mystically fanciful setting. Narratively you need food, water and fuel to make it relatable. Mechanically they don't have the level of super-tech Trek does.

Specifically:

On 10/7/2019 at 8:39 PM, Leia Hourglass said:

All ships have food synthesizers (we see that in Legends)

No, we don't. We see it in SOME legends, but not all. Remember that Star Wars Canon isn't as Solid as Trek's, so stuff varied wildly. Even then the commonly used "autochef" still typically needed to be restocked.

On 10/7/2019 at 8:39 PM, Leia Hourglass said:

water IS able to be created from scratch.

No, you need Hydrogen and Oxygen. Which isn't just lying around in space. Why you think NASA is all interested in finding ice on other planets/moons/asteroids?

On 10/7/2019 at 8:39 PM, Leia Hourglass said:

Coaxium is extremely volatile and probably would be tricky to engineer but they’ve been using it for 25,000 years; so I can’t believe someone hasn’t found a way to create it artificially. What’s the deal?

And by comparison fossil fuels are simple, so why are we using synthetic fossil fuels after a mere 100 years? Simple. Energy sources had a bad habit of requiring more energy to synthesize than they produce. So could they produce synthetic starship fuel? Probably. Is it worth it? Probably not. And again, you still need raw materials of some kind. Even if I did find a way to make gasoline efficiently, this isn't Harry Potter, I can't just wave a wand and have it appear (I suspect Harry potter might not either when you get into the deep lore). I'd still need carbon, hydrogen, ect. to start with.

On 10/7/2019 at 8:39 PM, Leia Hourglass said:

2.) Why hasn’t Star Wars discovered wireless power transmission like Tesla envisioned? They still plug everything in. Could wireless power have some drawbacks that make cords and wires a better option?

Again, it's a feature of the setting. You can apply pseudo-science if you like, but the bottom line is Star Wars is supposed to be relatable and inspired by the future as envisioned in 1930-1985. Wires and cables are part of that.

Even other Sci-fi has this issue often. How many times does Geordi have to reconfigure the EPS conduits? Electro-Plasmatic-System... (or something like that).

On 10/7/2019 at 8:39 PM, Leia Hourglass said:

The gay cat lover aliens from the 2015 Lando miniseries talk about affording the money to make a clone to serve as their surrogate child. In a world, where same-sex relationships are commonplace, I don’t understand why they don’t have artificial gametes so they can produce children with their bodies

… Again... 1930-1985. Homosexuality wasn't accepted when the concepts and expectations of the setting were established, so it wasn't a requirement that the setting get into such things.

That said, why did the Kaminoians need a Clone template?

Either the tech just doesn't go there, or there's another reason. Maybe it's illegal, or there's some glitch that we can envision.

On 10/7/2019 at 8:39 PM, Leia Hourglass said:

In a New Dawn, the mining facilities on Gorse are at the mercy of earthquakes generated by the tidal forces of its tidal locked moon Cynda. Many of the buildings are damaged by the quakes. Why don’t they have some sort of Geo-seismic stabilizers to help the structures be earthquake proof? We have some methods of earthquake protection on Earth; why don’t they? I can’t imagine they haven’t appeared in Legends

Probably because it was a feature of the story...

As others have mentioned, at the end of the day it's a movie. When you write a screenplay you don't first write a 9000 page guide outlining every aspect of the universe.

Trying to explain and rationalize every "expected" possibility of Sci-fi is just going to give you a headache. Star War more-so since it's also got fantasy and classic archetype influences on top of it all.

Might as well ask why in LOTR the Gandalf didn't magically teleport them all to mount doom? They can doin it Warcraft, so why not LOTR? Or send a magical message to Gondor? Why didn't the Elves just give everyone else a map to the undying lands and leave middle earth to Sauron?

See? There's such a thing as overthinking fiction.

On 10/7/2019 at 8:39 PM, Leia Hourglass said:

Archex in Black Spire has had his lung damaged in a fight with Phasma. Why not replace it with an artificial lung like Demetrius Vidian had?

Why does it matter?

Was it a story element? Might be all there is to it.

On 10/7/2019 at 8:39 PM, Leia Hourglass said:

Finally in the Phasma novel, Phasmas homeworld of Parnossos had been ravaged by nuclear war and the land is poisoned by radiation. I get nobody cares about a backwater rock like Parnossos, but surely they have some sort of “ De-nuclearization ” methods to clean the waste? Nuclear weapons and power are primitive in Star Wars so they should be able to clean it quite easily.

Maybe they didn't have the money? Maybe it was some space-nuke that works differently than real world nukes? Maybe they realized that the radioactive materials in the planet would break down and cease producing dangerous levels of ionizing radiation faster naturally than the decontamination droids could clean it up? Maybe there isn't a way to remove radioactive materials from an ecosystem on that scale?

It' really about what kind and how you use them too. Ground Zero of the first atomic bomb is totally safe now and has been for decades. That tells me there's more going on there.

Maybe the author just doesn't know the first thing about nukes and thought it sounded cool...

12 hours ago, Leia Hourglass said:

However in 2011, I became fascinated with futuristic science and for the last 3 years; I’ve become obsessed with integrating science into Star Wars. I know it’s a poor fit but it’s hard to stop my obsession.

Space fantasy laced with hard science fiction?

Take a Mass Effect codex and see how you feel in the morning.

19 minutes ago, wilsch said:

Space fantasy laced with hard science fiction?

Take a Mass Effect codex and see how you feel in the morning.

Yeah my cousin likes Mass Effect. I should check it out but I NEVER intend anything to replace Star Wars. My whole life is centered around it since I was 6. My love of science and tech (while not the main point of Star Wars) still exists in the background and I’ve poured through page after page of Wookieepedia articles that talk about science. My first love of course is the story but my headcanon has a lot of science in it.

Now come to think of it; if Star Wars is more fantasy then science, why do they have cybernetic limbs instead of something that regenerates limbs? Injecting you with a salve and then having a limb grow back like a Lizard looks like fantasy-magic science to me.

3 minutes ago, Leia Hourglass said:

Now come to think of it; if Star Wars is more fantasy then science, why do they have cybernetic limbs instead of something that regenerates limbs? Injecting you with a salve and then having a limb grow back like a Lizard looks like fantasy-magic science to me.

I've always seen it more as a Old-West Drama in Space. Very much like Firefly. The fact that it's in space means you have space ships and lasers, but it's still a Western in that life sucks, everything is dirty, and no one is really any better off than we are today. It's not a utopian sci-fi show, or a sci-fi drama, or a sci-fantasy show...there is no progressive human achievement, there is no progressive dream world...it's a western with some WW2, and Samurai influences.

To that end, any high tech sci-fi solution that would make life better, can't exist. It would undercut the old west 'feel'.

Instead of organically grown replacement organs and limbs, we have abominable mechanical things grafted onto people...like hook hands or peg legs

Instead of magical boxes that make food out of nothing (an effectively end starvation), we have people that starve, and governments that make sure the right people starve.

Instead of tiny hand held weapons that can vaporize things, we have old school looking clunky weapons that leave giant smoking scorch marks like bullet holes.

Instead of ships of peace and exploration on extended voyages to explore and help people, we have one man fighters waging continual galaxy wide wars.

You don’t want Star Wars to be science fiction, trust me.

The way I’ve always looked at it is the difference between Sci-fi and fantasy is what can explain the unbelievable elements of the story. Can science do it or does there have to be some unknown magic to make the story work?

Star Wars really has both elements, throwing it somewhere in the Science Fantasy category.

But straight Sci-fi? No thanks. Because then you have to do things like explain the force using science, and how would you go about doing that? Some dumb idea like microscopic bacteria in the bloodstream? Can you imagine how ridiculous that would be? People wouldn’t take you seriously anymore.

Yeah. It’s better as a mix that leans more towards fantasy, because Star Wars works when it moves at the speed of plot and doesn’t try to explain away certain elements through fact and instead focuses on story themes.

1 hour ago, Flavorabledeez said:

You don’t want Star Wars to be science fiction, trust me.

The way I’ve always looked at it is the difference between Sci-fi and fantasy is what can explain the unbelievable elements of the story. Can science do it or does there have to be some unknown magic to make the story work?

Star Wars really has both elements, throwing it somewhere in the Science Fantasy category.

But straight Sci-fi? No thanks. Because then you have to do things like explain the force using science, and how would you go about doing that? Some dumb idea like microscopic bacteria in the bloodstream? Can you imagine how ridiculous that would be? People wouldn’t take you seriously anymore.

Yeah. It’s better as a mix that leans more towards fantasy, because Star Wars works when it moves at the speed of plot and doesn’t try to explain away certain elements through fact and instead focuses on story themes.

😆

On 10/8/2019 at 11:41 PM, DarkHorse said:

Star Wars has advanced AI that can feel pain and fear but doesn't have wi-fi. Star Wars has faster than light travel but doesn't have women's underwear. Star Wars has civilizations of advanced people that live for 300+ years yet the entire galaxy has forgotten about something that happened 20 years ago. Star Wars has a mystical energy field that binds all living and inanimate things but doesn't have inertia in space.

Very few things in Star Wars were intended to make scientific sense. Instead they were intended to be cool, mysterious or at least analogous for the audience.

Star Wars has WiFi. For example Lobot is connected to Cloud City. What is likely going on is Star Wars has really good encryption. So if you have the key you can get on the wireless network. If you dont you have no way of connecting. So hard connections is the way to go. Also wireless is a huge security vulnerability so likely not available in military instalations.

18 hours ago, Leia Hourglass said:

Now come to think of it; if Star Wars is more fantasy then science, why do they have cybernetic limbs instead of something that regenerates limbs? Injecting you with a salve and then having a limb grow back like a Lizard looks like fantasy-magic science to me.

As far as Luke's cybernetic hand, that was done for story reasons, to help build towards that moment in RotJ where Luke realizes he's coming dangerously close to following in his father's dark footsteps and has to make that fateful choice between dark or light. It also highlights in RotJ that he is becoming more like his father, wearing black clothes and using the Force in a more aggressive manner (namely Force gripping those two guards in Jabba's palace).

As others have said, Star Wars walks a balance between science fiction and pure fantasy, taking whatever elements of each that the writers feel makes for a better story, especially when viewed through the lens of what science was back in the mid-70s through early 80s.

To say nothing back then of the "horror" that was the Clone Wars, leading many authors to suspect that any form of cloning was forbidden due to the "horrors" of that war, of which we only knew the name and that Obi-Wan had served as a general in it.

20 hours ago, Leia Hourglass said:

Yeah my cousin likes Mass Effect. I should check it out but I NEVER intend anything to replace Star Wars. My whole life is centered around it since I was 6. My love of science and tech (while not the main point of Star Wars) still exists in the background and I’ve poured through page after page of Wookieepedia articles that talk about science. My first love of course is the story but my headcanon has a lot of science in it.

To each their own. I have to say I like dipping in and out of different sci-fi universes. The differences between them help keep individual stories fresh to me, and present completely different challenges - both to characters and to writers. I'm currently bouncing between Jack Cambell's Lost Fleet (which has a complete lack of FTL 'in system' meaning it's one of the few settings which has to deal with comms lag, time dilation and FTL sensor delay in a big way), David Weber's Honor Harrington (which can 'see' at FTL but not move at FTL) and the Mulit-Author Horus Heresy (which says 'bugger physics' on level even beyond Star Wars )

22 hours ago, Ghostofman said:

That said, why did the Kaminoians need a Clone template?

Well, if you're producing clones, having someone to clone makes sense, even if you're then going to 'tweak' the basic genome. Why the heck you need to keep the guy around afterwards once you've got viable genetic offspring is a different question.

8 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Well, if you're producing clones, having someone to clone makes sense, even if you're then going to 'tweak' the basic genome. Why the heck you need to keep the guy around afterwards once you've got viable genetic offspring is a different question.

Maybe it's like what's said in that Michael Keaton movie where he clones himself (Multiplicity?) where if you make a copy of a copy of a copy, it degrades in quality.

So, they keep Jango around for a "pure template" that they can then modify as necessary/desired to avert or at least lessen the risk of degradation that would occur if cloning a clone, whose genetic template has already been tampered with. Plus I suspect Dooku wanted Jango kept out of sight to help cut down on any chances of the clone army being revealed before Sidious' plans were fully in place and ready to go.

Most of these questions can be answered by looking at the in-universe economics.

Star Wars has an economy that is very heavily shifted to benefit those who already control most of the resources in the galaxy. It is the antithesis of the Star Trek model - nothing has been devoted to figure out how to remove the scarcity economy because the people who would fund such things have never seen the benefit from it.

The Empire wants people to be poor. The Trade Federation wanted people to need the horridly expensive goods delivered by huge droid-run starships. The Republic basically fractured because they tried to levy taxes on the mega-wealthy.

Every example in the OP starts from a place of assuming the galaxy has no scarcity or would want to eliminate scarcity, and in Star Wars that assumption runs counter to the setting. If the answer to any technological question would result in it lessening or eliminating poverty, it will never exist in Star Wars.

1 hour ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

As far as Luke's cybernetic hand, that was done for story reasons, to help build towards that moment in RotJ where Luke realizes he's coming dangerously close to following in his father's dark footsteps and has to make that fateful choice between dark or light. It also highlights in RotJ that he is becoming more like his father, wearing black clothes and using the Force in a more aggressive manner (namely Force gripping those two guards in Jabba's palace).

As others have said, Star Wars walks a balance between science fiction and pure fantasy, taking whatever elements of each that the writers feel makes for a better story, especially when viewed through the lens of what science was back in the mid-70s through early 80s.

To say nothing back then of the "horror" that was the Clone Wars, leading many authors to suspect that any form of cloning was forbidden due to the "horrors" of that war, of which we only knew the name and that Obi-Wan had served as a general in it.

Not to mention if they just grew him a new arm, the loss of his hand wouldn't really matter. His folly at Bespin, and the price it cost him to act impulsively, wouldn't matter at all. With the mechanical hand, while it is functionally identical in every way, even feeling pain (when it's shot in Return on the sand barge, and Luke cried out in pain, and during the initial installment), to the audience, it's still not "his hand". It's an "other", which visually, and viscerally, conveys to the audience that his actions cost him something important. He has a substitute sure, but it's still not him. So there is a price, and he paid it.

1 hour ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Well, if you're producing clones, having someone to clone makes sense, even if you're then going to 'tweak' the basic genome. Why the heck you need to keep the guy around afterwards once you've got viable genetic offspring is a different question.

Well yeah, but the original question is why not just artificially assemble some DNA into a working zygote?

If that was a thing in Star Wars, the Kaminoians would have probably taken that option. So there's a reason why Cloning is the answer. Maybe it's technical, creating a person is pretty difficult and unreliable, even using the old fashioned method, so doing it with machines is probably it's own barrel of monkey lizards. Maybe it's legal. Perhaps there's an as-yet-unmentioned historical issue a la Khan Noonien Singh that makes is just something you aren't allowed to do.

2 hours ago, Ghostofman said:

Well yeah, but the original question is why not just artificially assemble some DNA into a working zygote?

If that was a thing in Star Wars, the Kaminoians would have probably taken that option. So there's a reason why Cloning is the answer. Maybe it's technical, creating a person is pretty difficult and unreliable, even using the old fashioned method, so doing it with machines is probably it's own barrel of monkey lizards. Maybe it's legal. Perhaps there's an as-yet-unmentioned historical issue a la Khan Noonien Singh that makes is just something you aren't allowed to do.

Or maybe back in the 1970s when George Lucas came up with the idea, the only concept that was semi-known to the pop culture world was cloning, not artificially constructing zygotes from DNA/RNA strands from scratch. The idea of "take thing, make more of same thing" is way more easy to grasp for the layperson, than "take stuff, shuffle it around into some structure, and poof, make person, make lots of person." I think people forget just how little understanding we had of biology and DNA back when this franchise began, and try to retro-active current scientific discoveries onto choices made back then. When the reality is far simpler. "George didn't think of it as an option, and it might not have even been an option back in 70s scientific understanding"

1 hour ago, KungFuFerret said:

Or maybe back in the 1970s when George Lucas came up with the idea, the only concept that was semi-known to the pop culture world was cloning, not artificially constructing zygotes from DNA/RNA strands from scratch. The idea of "take thing, make more of same thing" is way more easy to grasp for the layperson, than "take stuff, shuffle it around into some structure, and poof, make person, make lots of person." I think people forget just how little understanding we had of biology and DNA back when this franchise began, and try to retro-active current scientific discoveries onto choices made back then. When the reality is far simpler. "George didn't think of it as an option, and it might not have even been an option back in 70s scientific understanding"

To be fair, by the time we actually saw the Clone Wars that kind of stuff was more well known... Otherwise I totally agree, "Clone Wars" does sound cooler than "Shake n bake baby wars"